Toy-Free Kindergarten: The Differential Effects of a Prevention Project to Promote the Life Skills of Kindergarteners

Theoretical Background: Health promotion and health prevention in early childhood are crucial, as it is assumed that many risk and protective factors develop in the first years of life. Promoting life skills is a successful approach and pursues the goal of enhancing competencies that enable children to cope with demands in everyday life without resorting to risky behavior. The project "toy-free kindergarten" promotes the life skills of kindergarteners. Prefabricated toys are removed from the kindergarten for 8 - 10 weeks to counteract children's consumer behavior, strengthen their mental health, and prevent addiction over the long term. However, studies evaluating the project showed that not all children benefit equally; prior research indicates that the differential impact of an intervention may depend, among other things, on children's emotion regulation. Objective: This study investigates which children benefit more or less from the project toy-free kindergarten regarding the development of life skills. The focus lies specifically on whether the children's life skills of task orientation and empathy change as a function of their emotion regulation. Method: Teachers from 24 kindergartens used the questionnaire KOMPIK (Competences and Interests of Children) to provide information on 373 4 - 6-year-old children at the beginning of the project and shortly before the end of the project. They reported on the children's emotion regulation as well as their task orientation and empathy. Results: On average, the children's task orientation and empathy improved slightly, though some children also worsened. Multilevel longitudinal analyses revealed significant interactions: The lower a child's initial emotion regulation, the more likely it was to improve in task orientation (B = -0.16***, SD = 0.04) and empathy (B = -0.15***, SD = 0.04) from the beginning to the end of the project. Discussion and conclusion: The study indicates that the project has differential effects and, depending on the child, is associated with improvements but in some cases also with a decline in the two life skills of task orientation and empathy. Children with low emotion regulation are more likely to benefit from the project. There is a need for further investigation of the effectiveness of the prevention project. Implementation should focus more on the children's different developmental levels and competencies.